Facts: A couple and their children occupy a rent-controlled apartment as tenants. Many years later, the couple moves out, yet the eldest child, now an adult, continues to occupy the apartment and pays rent. The landlord sends a notice of a rent increase to the tenant.

Claim: The tenant seeks to avoid the rent increase, claiming it is unlawful for the landlord to raise the rent on their rent-controlled apartment since the tenant’s child is an original occupant under the rental agreement and remains in possession of the unit.

Counterclaim: The landlord seeks to raise the rent claiming the rent increase is permitted since the tenant who signed the rental agreement no longer occupies the apartment and the tenant’s child is not an original occupant under the rental agreement.

Holding: A California court of appeals holds the landlord may not raise the tenant’s rent since the tenant’s child is an original occupant as they resided in the apartment with their parents under the rental agreement and continued to reside there after their parents vacated, thus affording them protection under the local rent control ordinance. [T & A Drolapas & Sons, LP v. San Francisco Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board ___CA4th ____]

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